Kuwait’s first-ever tech­nol­ogy sem­i­nar kicks off

KUWAIT: Kuwait Foun­da­tion for Ad­vance­ment of Sci­ences (KFAS) and Bel­gium’s In­teruni­ver­sity Mi­cro Elec­tron­ics Cen­ter (Imec) or­ga­nized a “Vi­sion­ary Sem­i­nar, Ex­plor­ing Tech­nol­ogy for a Sus­tain­able Fu­ture” yes­ter­day. The first-ever event in the Arab World fo­cuses on the im­por­tance of tech­nol­ogy in de­vel­op­ing en­gi­neer­ing and health sec­tors, said KFAS Direc­tor Gen­eral Dr Ad­nan Shi­hab-Eldin in his open­ing speech.

In­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, but more im­por­tantly, in the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man cap­i­tal is key to­wards ad­vance­ments in sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy, he said. The out­come of such in­vest­ments is ev­i­denced by the enor­mous progress that has been achieved by a great num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als and en­ter­prises in many coun­tries around the world, he added. As an ex­am­ple of such progress, the In­tel pro­ces­sor to­day is the size of a fin­ger nail and has over seven bil­lion tran­sis­tors (Xeon Broad­well), each is 14 nanome­ters in size. So what was once con­sid­ered to be unimag­in­able, is to­day’s re­al­ity, KFAS’ of­fi­cial noted.

Kuwait strongly be­lieves in the im­por­tance of global tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment to world economies, and KFAS be­lieves that en­abling Kuwaiti sci­en­tists, en­gi­neers, the business com­mu­nity and so­ci­ety at large with these tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments is the path­way to a sus­tain­able, knowl­edge-based fu­ture for Kuwait, he added. KFAS en­cour­ages col­lab­o­ra­tive projects among na­tional, re­gional and in­ter­na­tional in­sti­tu­tions in ar­eas of mu­tual in­ter­est par­tic­u­larly in water, en­ergy and en­vi­ron­ment, Shi­hab-Eldin said.

He noted that in 2015, KFAS pro­vided a to­tal of KD 6.5 mil­lion in grants for fund­ing mis­sion-ori­ented col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search projects aimed at ad­dress­ing key na­tional pri­or­i­ties. The re­search is un­der­taken by lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions such as Kuwait In­sti­tute for Sci­en­tific Re­search (KISR) and Kuwait Univer­sity (KU) and in­ter­na­tional cen­ters of re­search ex­cel­lence such as the Mas­sachusetts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (MIT). KFAS also, fa­cil­i­tates market pen­e­tra­tion of tech­nolo­gies that can be of great ben­e­fit to Kuwait.

As an ex­am­ple, KFAS re­cently spon­sored some vi­tal pilot and demon­stra­tion projects to pro­mote the ex­panded use of roof-top so­lar pan­els in res­i­den­tial build­ings and park­ing ar­eas in co­op­er­a­tive so­ci­eties. The project will con­trib­ute to ful­fill­ing the vi­sion of His High­ness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ah­mad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, which calls for re­duc­ing 15 per­cent of to­tal elec­tric­ity de­mand by 2030, he added. The one-day sem­i­nar, was at­tended by over 300 re­searchers and oth­ers in­volved in field of tech­nol­ogy from pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.— KUNA